Campaigner Awards: Best By-election campaign

Each year, ALDC recognises the outstanding work of local Focus teams through our Campaigner Awards and ythe voting is now open to select your best Focus teams from across the UK.

The Campaigner Awards are presented at the ALDC AGM at Federal Conference. Winners in each category and our Overall Winner will receive cash prizes and a signed and framed certificate for their office!

This year, after shortlisting, we have opened the vote to you! We want members of the party to have a say in this year’s winners.

The nominations are :

Aird & Loch Ness –

The team demonstrated commitment and resilience to campaign and deliver a large rural ward.

The campaign demonstrated the importance of traditional Liberal Democrat grass roots campaigning supported by modern campaigning and motivating techniques through Connect, phone banks and on the ground. We demonstrated the importance of persisting to the end of polling day to get out the vote leading to me being ahead in the count at all stages. It was a stunning and (to many though not all) unexpected win motivating the Highland activists and clearly demonstrating the start of out Liberal Democrat fightback.

The Team in NE Cambridgeshire gained ay county council division on Cambridgeshire County Council from the Tories in February 2016, turning a Tory majority of 275 into a Lib Dem majority of 412.

This was a critical contest, with the Tories just short of a majority on this NOC council (31 seats out of 69 at the time, with two vacancies) and ourselves just two seats above third-placed UKIP in terms of seats on the council.

Our vote share increased by 5% in a ward where we had done well in the 2014 election. The swing away from us was because the Tory vote share increased by over 11%, mostly due to the collapse in the UKIP vote. In wards where the Lib Dem majority is knife edge, this could cause us problems in 2018 if the UKIP vote continues to fall and the Tories benefit.

The by-election has shown us that we need to start even earlier than ever to prepare for 2018 – communication, messaging and real conversations on the doorstep will be key to our success.

Fighting a by-election in very difficult circumstances doesn’t mean you are going to lose — but you do need to work extremely hard, stay on message and ultimately be positive!

Amongst the news of the continuing aftermath of last month’s referendum, Liberal Democrats had an excellent piece of news: the gain of a Mole Valley District Council seat from the Conservatives in Leatherhead North. It was not just a simple gain but one with a thumping majority and large increase in our vote share.

ith limited resource we needed to think through our contact strategy. With a full-time job and family demands, Joe’s time was at a premium, so we gave him a list of postal voters near his house, so he could dash out when he had half an hour spare. However, almost as productive, was his 15-minute walk to and from work where he collected lots of messages of support.

Norman Mills

I would give my vote to NE Cambridgeshire

Vera Roberts

Is the reference to dog fowling in Aird and Loch Ness leaflets related to hunting for water fowl?? Front page of three leaflets with ‘fowling’, when I presume (though I could be wrong) they mean ‘fouling’

David Draper

I would give my vote to Mole Valley. In one of safest Tory parts of the Ik to win with that majority was almost miraculous! Social media played a large part in the campaign with the candidate adept at this form of communication. Great job Mole Valley, and well done Jo